Validating an Attachment of an Electronic Communication Based on Recipients

ABSTRACT

A mechanism is provided for validating an attachment to an electronic communication being composed based on the recipients of the electronic communication. An associated tone or theme of the at least one attachment to the electronic communication being composed by a sender and an identity of each of one or more recipients to whom the electronic communication is to be sent and the sender are identified. One or more previous electronic communications sent to or received from one or more of the one or more recipients and at least one tone of each of the one or more previous electronic communications are identified in order to generate one or more preferred tones. Responsive to identifying a tone discrepancy between the tone or theme of the at least one attachment and the one or more preferred tones, a notification is presented to the sender.

BACKGROUND

The present application relates generally to an improved data processingapparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for validatingan attachment of an electronic communication based on the recipients ofthe electronic communication.

Tone analysis is a natural language processing task to identify a toneof natural language text. Tone analysis is a general term, but oneexample of a tone analysis mechanism is the IBM® Tone Analyzer whichprovides an output for emotional/sentiment tone (anger, cheer, positive,negative, or the like), social/personality tone (agreeable,conscientious, open, or the like) and writing tone (analytical,confident, tentative, or the like). A tone analysis task is seen as veryuseful in the electronic communications domain so that senders mayreview the tone of an electronic communication (i.e. an email) beforethe electronic communication is sent.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described herein in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key factors oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

In one illustrative embodiment, a method, in a data processing system,is provided for validating an attachment to an electronic communicationbeing composed based on the recipients of the electronic communication.The illustrative embodiment identifies an associated tone or theme of atleast one attachment to the electronic communication being composed by asender. The illustrative embodiment identifies an identity of each ofone or more recipients to whom the electronic communication is to besent and the sender. The illustrative embodiment determines at least oneof a relative position, rank, title, or standing of the sender and eachof the one or more recipients. The illustrative embodiment identifiesone or more previous electronic communications sent to or received fromone or more of the one or more recipients. The illustrative embodimentidentifies at least one tone of each of the one or more previouselectronic communications in order to generate one or more preferredtones. The illustrative embodiment compares the tone or theme of the atleast one attachment to the one or more preferred tones. Theillustrative embodiment presents a notification to the sender about thediscrepancy in response to identifying a discrepancy between the tone ortheme of the at least one attachment and the one or more preferredtones.

In other illustrative embodiments, a computer program product comprisinga computer useable or readable medium having a computer readable programis provided. The computer readable program, when executed on a computingdevice, causes the computing device to perform various ones of, andcombinations of, the operations outlined above with regard to the methodillustrative embodiment.

In yet another illustrative embodiment, a system/apparatus is provided.The system/apparatus may comprise one or more processors and a memorycoupled to the one or more processors. The memory may compriseinstructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe one or more processors to perform various ones of, and combinationsof, the operations outlined above with regard to the method illustrativeembodiment.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will bedescribed in, or will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart in view of, the following detailed description of the exampleembodiments of the present invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention, as well as a preferred mode of use and further objectivesand advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to thefollowing detailed description of illustrative embodiments when read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is an example diagram of a distributed data processing system inwhich aspects of the illustrative embodiments may be implemented;

FIG. 2 is an example block diagram of a computing device in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments may be implemented;

FIG. 3 depicts a functional block diagram for validating the tone of anelectronic communication being composed based on the recipients of theelectronic communication in accordance with an illustrative embodiment;and

FIG. 4 depicts a flowchart of the operation performed by the exemplarymechanism to validate the tone of an electronic communication beingcomposed based on the recipients of the electronic communication inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

As stated previously, tone analysis is a natural language processingtask to identify a tone of natural language text. Tone analysis is ageneral term, but one example of a tone analysis mechanism is the IBM®Tone Analyzer which provides an output for emotional/sentiment tone(anger, cheer, positive, negative, or the like), social/personality tone(agreeable, conscientious, open, or the like) and writing tone(analytical, confident, tentative, or the like). A tone analysis task isseen as very useful in the electronic communications domain so thatsenders may review the tone of an electronic communication (i.e. anemail) before the electronic communication is sent.

However, currently, there is no known mechanism for evaluating whetherthe tone of an electronic communication being composed by a sender or anattachment to the electronic communication is proper for givenrecipient(s). That is, current tone analysis technology only provides atone of the electronic communication being composed to the sender, butit is up to the sender to know whether the tone is appropriate for therecipient(s) of the electronic communication. Thus, the illustrativeembodiments provide a mechanism for identifying one or more recipientsof an electronic communication and determining whether the tone of theelectronic communication being composed or an attachment to theelectronic communication is of an appropriate tone for the one or morerecipient(s). The appropriate tone for a recipient may be determined byanalyzing the tone of previous electronic communications to and/or fromthe one or more recipients based on a hierarchical chart, organizationalchart, or the like, used to identify the position of the sender and theposition of the one or more recipients.

For example, if the sender is composing an electronic communication totheir second line manager, the tone of electronic communication thatsender has received from the second line manager and possibly othersecond line managers are identified and aggregated for a preferred tonefor the electronic communication being composed that is to be sent bythe sender. Going one step further, the tone of a response to theelectronic communications from the recipient to the second line managerand possibly other second line managers may be identified and aggregatedto inform the sender of the tone the sender may expect in return,thereby allowing the sender to adjust the tone of the electroniccommunication being composed as desired.

Thus, the illustrative embodiments provide mechanisms for validating atone of an electronic communication being composed and a tone/theme ofany attachment, if provided, based on the recipients of the electroniccommunication. With reference to an electronic communication that isbeing composed by a sender, the illustrative embodiments determine thetone or tones of the electronic communication. In the illustrativeembodiments, the word “tone” is used to cover multiple facets, which mayeach be identified by different technologies:

-   -   sentiment analysis towards entities found in the message        (persons, projects, or the like);    -   psychological state: anger, anxiety, depression, emotional        withdrawal, rigidity, impulsiveness, emotional instability, or        the like; or    -   personality insights: openness to experience, conscientiousness,        extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (the Big Five),        personality and social characteristics, needs, values, or the        like.

Research has shown a strong and statistically significant correlationbetween word choices and personality, emotions, attitudes, intrinsicneeds, values, and thought processes. The illustrative embodimentsanalyze the electronic communication that is being composed for languagetones using a linguistic analysis that studies the correlation betweenvarious tones and linguistic features in electronic communication. Forexample, the illustrative embodiments derive emotional scores from theelectronic communication using a stacked generalization-based ensembleframework. Stacked generalization is a general method of using ahigh-level model to combine lower-level models to achieve greaterpredictive accuracy. Features such as n-grams (unigrams, bigrams andtrigrams), punctuation, emoticons, curse words, greeting words (such ashello, hi, and thanks), and sentiment polarity are utilized to classifyemotion categories. As another example, the illustrative embodimentsderive social scores based on the openness to experience,conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism of theelectronic communication. As still another example, the illustrativeembodiments identify the writing style of the electronic communicationusing a linguistic analysis of each sentence.

In the illustrative embodiments, the tone of the electroniccommunication that is being composed may be identified by any type oftone analysis mechanism, such as the IBM® Tone Analyzer, in order toprovide an output for emotional/sentiment tone (anger, cheer, positive,negative, or the like), social/personality tone (agreeable,conscientious, open, or the like) and writing tone (analytical,confident, tentative, or the like). That is, while the illustrativeembodiments use the IBM® Tone Analyzer as an example, the illustrativeembodiments are not limited to only the IBM® Tone Analyzer as any typeof tone analyzer may be utilized to determine the tone or tones of theelectronic communication, such as the AlchemyAPI™ Entity-level SentimentAnalysis. Furthermore, the illustrative embodiments are directed toexpand on identifying the tone of the electronic communication in orderto identify whether the tone of the electronic communication isappropriate for the recipients to whom the electronic communication isto be sent.

A similar process exists for analyzing attachments to an electroniccommunication. For example, if the attachment is a text attachment, suchas a Microsoft® Word document, a pdf document, or the like, theillustrative embodiments would analyze such text documents in the samemanner as described previously with regard to the electroniccommunication itself. With regard to image attachments, such aspictures, videos, or the like, the illustrative embodiments utilizeimage recognition software, such as AlchemyAPI™ services, to recognizefaces, entities, objects, buildings, animals, or the like, in order toidentify a theme of the pictures, videos, or the like. The identifiedtheme of the image is then provided to the tone analysis mechanism andanalyzed in the same manner as described previously with regard to theelectronic communication itself. With regard to an audio trackassociated with a video, if present, the illustrative embodimentsutilize a speech-to-text service that first converts the audio to textand then analyzes the text in the same manner as described previouslywith regard to the electronic communication itself. Still further, theillustrative embodiment may analyze hyperlinks included in an electroniccommination. The illustrative embodiments follow the link and, if thelink is a text link, analyze the text in the same manner as describedpreviously with regard to the electronic communication itself. If thelink were an image link, then the link would be analyzed as describedpreviously with regard to image attachments.

In another embodiment, the author of an attachment, if available, may beextracted from the attachment. If the author and the sender are the sameperson, then the tone of the attachment may be analyzed as if theattachment was part of the electronic communication itself. Otherwise,sentiment analysis may be applied to the electronic communication tounderstand the sender's opinion about the attachment. The combination ofthe sender's sentiment and the attachment tone is then compared toprevious electronic communications in order to identify whether the toneof the electronic communication is appropriate for the recipients towhom the electronic communication is to be sent. For example, anattachment with tone discrepancies, combined with an electroniccommunication where the sender has a negative sentiment towards theattachment, may not require any adjustment by the sender.

Therefore, as one example, if the attachment were a virtual businesscard attachment that includes a picture of the sender, then the imagerecognition software would identify the image as the sender's own imageand determine its appropriateness as described below, which would beconsidered reasonable attachment. As another example, if the attachmentis a video of the CEO, then the image recognition software wouldidentify the image as the CEO, analyze the text for tone as describedpreviously and determine the video's appropriateness as described below,which would be considered reasonable attachment. As a final example, ifthe attachment were a picture of a kitten, then the image recognitionsoftware would identify the image as a kitten and determine itsappropriateness as described below. Based on the history of previouslyelectronic communication, the picture of the kitten may be consideredinappropriate.

Therefore, for the sender of the electronic communication that is beingcomposed and for each of one or more recipients of the electroniccommunication, the illustrative embodiments determine an associatedrelative position, rank, title, standing, or the like, hereinafterreferred to simply as position. That is, for the recipients of theelectronic communication, the illustrative embodiments identify theidentity of each of the one or more recipients to whom the electroniccommunication is to be sent, by analyzing the “To” field, the “Cc”field, the “Bcc” field, or the like. Further, for the sender, theillustrative embodiments identify the sender's identity from the accountsetting associated with the application that created the electroniccommunication. The identity for the sender and each of the one or morerecipients, may include a full name (first, middle, and/or last), anemail address, an associated company (may be identified from the emailaddress), or the like.

With the identities of the sender and each of the one or more recipientsof the electronic communication identified, the illustrative embodimentsdetermine a position of the sender and each of the one or morerecipients utilizing a corpus of information, such as:

-   -   organizational charts for the company where the sender is        employed;    -   organizational charts gathered from websites associated with the        domain name(s) that represents the administrative realm for the        electronic communication, e.g., a company's domain name;    -   information from social media sites such as Linkedin®,        Affluence™, Biznik®, or the like; or    -   as well as any other type of hierarchical or informational        structure that represents or provides the sender's and each of        the recipient's position.        Determining the position of the sender and each of the one or        more recipients may just be the depth of each of them in the        corpus of information. However, more complex implementations of        the illustrative embodiments may take into consideration whether        or not the sender and each of the one or more recipients are in        the same branch, the average depth of each branch, or the like.        That is, for example, if the sender and a recipient have        indistinguishable or vague titles, then the illustrative        embodiment may search an organizational chart to determine a        relative distance in the organizational tree between the sender        and the recipient.

In one embodiment, using the identified identity information and theposition of the sender and the one or more recipients, the illustrativeembodiments search the sender's history of electronic communications forone or more previous electronic communications sent to or received fromthe one or more recipients. That is, the illustrative embodiments searchfor one or more previous electronic communications sent to or receivedfrom the one or more recipients from the sender in order to identify atone of those previous electronic communications.

In another embodiment, if there are no previous electroniccommunications in the sender's history of electronic communications sentto or received from one or more of the one or more recipients, theillustrative embodiments utilizes the previous corpus of information andthe position of the one or more of the one or more recipients for whichthere are no previous electronic communications to identify one or moreother persons that have the same or similar position of the one or moreof the one or more recipients for which there are no previous electroniccommunications. Then, using the identified identity information of theone or more other persons with a same or similar position of the one ormore of the one or more recipients for which there are no previouselectronic communications, the illustrative embodiments search thesender's history of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from the one or more otherpersons with a same or similar position. For example, if a first linemanager has not previously sent an electronic communication to a firstvice president of a company, then the illustrative embodiment woulddetermine whether there are other vice presidents in the same company asthe first vice president. If there are other vice presidents in the samecompany as the first vice president, then the illustrative embodimentswould search the sender's history of electronic communications for oneor more previous electronic communications sent to the other vicepresidents.

In still another embodiment, in addition to searching the sender'shistory of electronic communications for one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from the one or more recipients, theillustrative embodiments may search another corpus of information ofelectronic communications for one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from persons with a same or similarposition to that of the sender. For example, if a first line manager isa relatively new manager and has not previously sent any electroniccommunications to any vice presidents of a company, then theillustrative embodiment would determine whether there are other firstline managers that have sent electronic communications to the vicepresidents in the company. If there are other first line managers thathave sent electronic communications to one or more vice presidents inthe company, then the illustrative embodiments would search the historyof electronic communications for the other first line managers for oneor more previous electronic communications sent to the vice presidents.

Regardless of which embodiment is used to identify the one or moreprevious electronic communications, the illustrative embodiments analyzeeach of the one or more previous electronic communications for one ormore preferred tones using the previously described tone analysismechanism in order to provide an output for emotional/sentiment tone(anger, cheer, positive, negative, or the like), social/personality tone(agreeable, conscientious, open, or the like), and writing tone(analytical, confident, tentative, or the like) for each of the one ormore previous electronic communications. The illustrative embodimentsmay differentiate between those previous electronic communications thatwere sent by the sender to each of the one or more recipients versusthose electronic communications that were received by the sender fromeach of the one or more recipients. This differentiation may beperformed to determine how the previously sent electronic communicationswere received by the one or more recipients. That is, the illustrativeembodiment may compare the tone of the electronic communications sent bythe sender to the one or more recipients to the tone of responses to thepreviously electronic communications received by the sender from the oneor more recipients in order to determine whether the tone used by thesender was appropriate, i.e. did the response indicate that the tone ofthe sender was or was not appropriate?

With the one or more preferred tones of the previous electroniccommunications determined, the illustrative embodiments compare the toneof the electronic communication that is being composed and a tone/themeof any attachments to the electronic communication, if present, to theone or more preferred tones. If there is a discrepancy between the toneof the electronic communication being composed and/or the tone/theme ofany attachment and the one or more preferred tones, the illustrativeembodiments provide a notification to the sender of the discrepancy. Inone embodiment, the notification may be a simple notification thatnotifies the sender that the tone of the electronic communication mayannoy, irritate, or the like, one or more of the one or more recipients.In another embodiment, the notification may be a complex notificationthat not only notifies the sender that the tone of the electroniccommunication may annoy, irritate, or the like, one or more of the oneor more recipients but also identify which specific recipient theelectronic communication may annoy, irritate, or the like, as well asthe specific recipient's position. Additionally, the illustrativeembodiment may be able to identify, based on the tone analysis and thecomparison, the specific portion of the electronic communication that isof concern so that the sender may adjust only that portion of theelectronic communication and not have to rewrite the entire electroniccommunication.

Having given an overview of operations in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment, before beginning the discussion of the variousaspects of the illustrative embodiments in more detail, it should firstbe appreciated that throughout this description the term “mechanism”will be used to refer to elements of the present invention that performvarious operations, functions, and the like. A “mechanism,” as the termis used herein, may be an implementation of the functions or aspects ofthe illustrative embodiments in the form of an apparatus, a procedure,or a computer program product. In the case of a procedure, the procedureis implemented by one or more devices, apparatus, computers, dataprocessing systems, or the like. In the case of a computer programproduct, the logic represented by computer code or instructions embodiedin or on the computer program product is executed by one or morehardware devices in order to implement the functionality or perform theoperations associated with the specific “mechanism.” Thus, themechanisms described herein may be implemented as specialized hardware,software executing on general-purpose hardware, software instructionsstored on a medium such that the instructions are readily executable byspecialized or general-purpose hardware, a procedure or method forexecuting the functions, or a combination of any of the above.

The present description and claims may make use of the terms “a,” “atleast one of,” and “one or more of” with regard to particular featuresand elements of the illustrative embodiments. It should be appreciatedthat these terms and phrases are intended to state that there is atleast one of the particular feature or element present in the particularillustrative embodiment, but that more than one can also be present.That is, these terms/phrases are not intended to limit the descriptionor claims to a single feature/element being present or require that aplurality of such features/elements be present. To the contrary, theseterms/phrases only require at least a single feature/element with thepossibility of a plurality of such features/elements being within thescope of the description and claims.

Moreover, it should be appreciated that the use of the term “engine,” ifused herein with regard to describing embodiments and features of theinvention, is not intended to be limiting of any particularimplementation for accomplishing and/or performing the actions, steps,processes, etc., attributable to and/or performed by the engine. Anengine may be, but is not limited to, software, hardware and/or firmwareor any combination thereof that performs the specified functionsincluding, but not limited to, any use of a general and/or specializedprocessor in combination with appropriate software loaded or stored in amachine readable memory and executed by the processor. Further, any nameassociated with a particular engine is, unless otherwise specified, forpurposes of convenience of reference and not intended to be limiting toa specific implementation. Additionally, any functionality attributed toan engine may be equally performed by multiple engines, incorporatedinto and/or combined with the functionality of another engine of thesame or different type, or distributed across one or more engines ofvarious configurations.

In addition, it should be appreciated that the following descriptionuses a plurality of various examples for various elements of theillustrative embodiments to further illustrate example implementationsof the illustrative embodiments and to aid in the understanding of themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. These examples are intendedto be non-limiting and are not exhaustive of the various possibilitiesfor implementing the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. It willbe apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art in view of the presentdescription that there are many other alternative implementations forthese various elements that may be utilized in addition to, or inreplacement of, the examples provided herein without departing from thespirit and scope of the present invention.

Thus, the illustrative embodiments may be utilized in many differenttypes of data processing environments. In order to provide a context forthe description of the specific elements and functionality of theillustrative embodiments, FIGS. 1 and 2 are provided hereafter asexample environments in which aspects of the illustrative embodimentsmay be implemented. It should be appreciated that FIGS. 1 and 2 are onlyexamples and are not intended to assert or imply any limitation withregard to the environments in which aspects or embodiments of thepresent invention may be implemented. Many modifications to the depictedenvironments may be made without departing from the spirit and scope ofthe present invention.

FIG. 1 depicts a pictorial representation of an example distributed dataprocessing system in which aspects of the illustrative embodiments maybe implemented. Distributed data processing system 100 may include anetwork of computers in which aspects of the illustrative embodimentsmay be implemented. The distributed data processing system 100 comprisesat least one network 102, which is the medium used to providecommunication links between various devices and computers connectedtogether within distributed data processing system 100. The network 102may include connections, such as wire, wireless communication links, orfiber optic cables.

In the depicted example, server 104 and server 106 are connected tonetwork 102 along with storage unit 108. In addition, clients 110, 112,and 114 are also connected to network 102. These clients 110, 112, and114 may be, for example, personal computers, network computers, or thelike. In the depicted example, server 104 provides data, such as bootfiles, operating system images, and applications to the clients 110,112, and 114. Clients 110, 112, and 114 are clients to server 104 in thedepicted example. Distributed data processing system 100 may includeadditional servers, clients, and other devices not shown.

In the depicted example, distributed data processing system 100 is theInternet with network 102 representing a worldwide collection ofnetworks and gateways that use the Transmission ControlProtocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols to communicatewith one another. At the heart of the Internet is a backbone ofhigh-speed data communication lines between major nodes or hostcomputers, consisting of thousands of commercial, governmental,educational and other computer systems that route data and messages. Ofcourse, the distributed data processing system 100 may also beimplemented to include a number of different types of networks, such asfor example, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the like. As stated above, FIG. 1 is intended as anexample, not as an architectural limitation for different embodiments ofthe present invention, and therefore, the particular elements shown inFIG. 1 should not be considered limiting with regard to the environmentsin which the illustrative embodiments of the present invention may beimplemented.

As shown in FIG. 1, one or more of the computing devices, e.g., server104, may be specifically configured to implement a mechanism forvalidating the tone of an electronic communication being composed basedon the recipients of the electronic communication. The configuring ofthe computing device may comprise the providing of application specifichardware, firmware, or the like to facilitate the performance of theoperations and generation of the outputs described herein with regard tothe illustrative embodiments. The configuring of the computing devicemay also, or alternatively, comprise the providing of softwareapplications stored in one or more storage devices and loaded intomemory of a computing device, such as server 104, for causing one ormore hardware processors of the computing device to execute the softwareapplications that configure the processors to perform the operations andgenerate the outputs described herein with regard to the illustrativeembodiments. Moreover, any combination of application specific hardware,firmware, software applications executed on hardware, or the like, maybe used without departing from the spirit and scope of the illustrativeembodiments.

It should be appreciated that once the computing device is configured inone of these ways, the computing device becomes a specialized computingdevice specifically configured to implement the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments and is not a general-purpose computing device.Moreover, as described hereafter, the implementation of the mechanismsof the illustrative embodiments improves the functionality of thecomputing device and provides a useful and concrete result thatfacilitates validating the tone of an electronic communication beingcomposed based on the recipients of the electronic communication.

As noted above, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments utilizespecifically configured computing devices, or data processing systems,to perform the operations for validating the tone of an electroniccommunication being composed based on the recipients of the electroniccommunication. These computing devices, or data processing systems, maycomprise various hardware elements that are specifically configured,either through hardware configuration, software configuration, or acombination of hardware and software configuration, to implement one ormore of the systems/subsystems described herein. FIG. 2 is a blockdiagram of just one example data processing system in which aspects ofthe illustrative embodiments may be implemented. Data processing system200 is an example of a computer, such as server 104 in FIG. 1, in whichcomputer usable code or instructions implementing the processes andaspects of the illustrative embodiments of the present invention may belocated and/or executed to achieve the operation, output, and externaleffects of the illustrative embodiments as described herein.

In the depicted example, data processing system 200 employs a hubarchitecture including north bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH)202 and south bridge and input/output (I/O) controller hub (SB/ICH) 204.Processing unit 206, main memory 208, and graphics processor 210 areconnected to NB/MCH 202. Graphics processor 210 may be connected toNB/MCH 202 through an accelerated graphics port (AGP).

In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 212 connectsto SB/ICH 204. Audio adapter 216, keyboard and mouse adapter 220, modem222, read only memory (ROM) 224, hard disk drive (HDD) 226, CD-ROM drive230, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communication ports 232,and PCI/PCIe devices 234 connect to SB/ICH 204 through bus 238 and bus240. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters,add-in cards, and PC cards for notebook computers. PCI uses a card buscontroller, while PCIe does not. ROM 224 may be, for example, a flashbasic input/output system (BIOS).

HDD 226 and CD-ROM drive 230 connect to SB/ICH 204 through bus 240. HDD226 and CD-ROM drive 230 may use, for example, an integrated driveelectronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA)interface. Super I/O (SIO) device 236 may be connected to SB/ICH 204.

An operating system runs on processing unit 206. The operating systemcoordinates and provides control of various components within the dataprocessing system 200 in FIG. 2. As a client, the operating system maybe a commercially available operating system such as Microsoft® Windows7®. An object-oriented programming system, such as the Java™ programmingsystem, may run in conjunction with the operating system and providescalls to the operating system from Java™ programs or applicationsexecuting on data processing system 200.

As a server, data processing system 200 may be, for example, an IBMeServer™ System p® computer system, Power™ processor based computersystem, or the like, running the Advanced Interactive Executive (AIX®)operating system or the LINUX® operating system. Data processing system200 may be a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system including a pluralityof processors in processing unit 206. Alternatively, a single processorsystem may be employed.

Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs are located on storage devices,such as HDD 226, and may be loaded into main memory 208 for execution byprocessing unit 206. The processes for illustrative embodiments of thepresent invention may be performed by processing unit 206 using computerusable program code, which may be located in a memory such as, forexample, main memory 208, ROM 224, or in one or more peripheral devices226 and 230, for example.

A bus system, such as bus 238 or bus 240 as shown in FIG. 2, may becomprised of one or more buses. Of course, the bus system may beimplemented using any type of communication fabric or architecture thatprovides for a transfer of data between different components or devicesattached to the fabric or architecture. A communication unit, such asmodem 222 or network adapter 212 of FIG. 2, may include one or moredevices used to transmit and receive data. A memory may be, for example,main memory 208, ROM 224, or a cache such as found in NB/MCH 202 in FIG.2.

As mentioned above, in some illustrative embodiments the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments may be implemented as application specifichardware, firmware, or the like, application software stored in astorage device, such as HDD 226 and loaded into memory, such as mainmemory 208, for executed by one or more hardware processors, such asprocessing unit 206, or the like. As such, the computing device shown inFIG. 2 becomes specifically configured to implement the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments and specifically configured to perform theoperations and generate the outputs described hereafter with regard tothe validation of a tone of an electronic communication being composedbased on the recipients of the electronic communication.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware inFIGS. 1 and 2 may vary depending on the implementation. Other internalhardware or peripheral devices, such as flash memory, equivalentnon-volatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, may be used inaddition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIGS. 1 and 2. Also,the processes of the illustrative embodiments may be applied to amultiprocessor data processing system, other than the SMP systemmentioned previously, without departing from the spirit and scope of thepresent invention.

Moreover, the data processing system 200 may take the form of any of anumber of different data processing systems including client computingdevices, server computing devices, a tablet computer, laptop computer,telephone or other communication device, a personal digital assistant(PDA), or the like. In some illustrative examples, data processingsystem 200 may be a portable computing device that is configured withflash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating systemfiles and/or user-generated data, for example. Essentially, dataprocessing system 200 may be any known or later developed dataprocessing system without architectural limitation.

FIG. 3 depicts a functional block diagram of an electronic communicationtone evaluation mechanism for validating the tone of an electroniccommunication being composed based on the recipients of the electroniccommunication in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. Electroniccommunication tone evaluation mechanism 300, which is in a dataprocessing system such as data processing system 200 of FIG. 2,comprises tone analyzer 302, image recognition engine 303,recipient/sender identifier 304, position identifier 306, previouselectronic communication identifier 308, comparer 310, and corpora 312.In the illustrative embodiments, corpora 312 may comprise varioussources themselves, different collections of sources, and the like, eachof which represent a different corpus 314 within the corpora 312. Forexample, in accordance with the illustrative embodiments, one corpus 314may comprise organizational charts for the company where the sender isemployed; organizational charts gathered from websites associated withthe domain name(s) of the one or more recipients representing theadministrative realm for the electronic communication; information fromsocial media sites such as Linkedin®, Affluence™, Biznik®, or the like;and/or any other type of hierarchical or informational structure thatrepresents or provides the sender's and each of the recipient'sposition. As another example, in accordance with the illustrativeembodiments, another corpus 314 may comprise emails, messages, texts, orthe like, for the sender, for the company of the sender, or for aplurality of companies. The emails, messages, texts, or the like, inthis corpus 314 may be accessed for tone analysis only and are notaccessible for reading by any other person other than the intended userof the specific email, message, text, or the like.

Responsive to a sender composing electronic communication 316 thatcomprises at least one recipient and at least one sentence that is to besent to the at least one recipient, tone analyzer 302 determines thetone or tones of the electronic communication. Again, in theillustrative embodiments, the word “tone” is used to cover multiplefacets, which may each be identified by different technologies:

-   -   sentiment analysis towards entities found in the message        (persons, projects, or the like);    -   psychological state: anger, anxiety, depression, emotional        withdrawal, rigidity, impulsiveness, emotional instability, or        the like; or    -   personality insights: openness to experience, conscientiousness,        extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (the Big Five),        personality and social characteristics, needs, values, or the        like.

Tone analyzer 302 analyzes the electronic communication that is beingcomposed for language tones using a linguistic analysis that studies thecorrelation between various tones and linguistic features in electroniccommunication. For example, the illustrative embodiments deriveemotional scores from the electronic communication using a stackedgeneralization-based ensemble framework. Stacked generalization is ageneral method of using a high-level model to combine lower-level modelsto achieve greater predictive accuracy. Features such as n-grams(unigrams, bigrams and trigrams), punctuation, emoticons, curse words,greeting words (such as hello, hi, and thanks), and sentiment polarityare utilized to classify emotion categories. As another example, theillustrative embodiments derive social scores based on the openness toexperience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, andneuroticism of the electronic communication. As still another example,the illustrative embodiments identify the writing style of theelectronic communication using a linguistic analysis of each sentence.

Responsive to the user attaching an attachment to the electroniccommunication, if the attachment is a text attachment, an audio portionof a video attachment that has been converted to text, a text documentthat is referenced by a link, or the like, tone analyzer 302 analyzessuch text documents in the same manner as described previously withregard to the electronic communication itself. If the attachment is animage attachment, video attachment, image or video referenced by a link,or the like, image recognition engine 303 analyzes the image(s) toidentify one or more of faces, entities, objects, buildings, animals, orthe like, in order to identify a theme of the pictures, videos, or thelike. The identified theme of the image is then provided to the toneanalyzer 302 and analyzed in the same manner as described previouslywith regard to the electronic communication itself.

In order to identify whether the tone of the electronic communication isappropriate for the recipients to whom the electronic communication isto be sent, recipient/sender identifier 304 identifies the identity ofeach of the one or more recipients to whom the electronic communicationis to be sent, by analyzing the “To” field, the “Cc” field, the “Bcc”field, or the like. Further, for the sender, recipient/sender identifier304 identifies the sender's identity from the account setting associatedwith the application that created the electronic communication. Theidentity for the sender and each of the one or more recipients, mayinclude a full name (first, middle, and/or last), an email address, anassociated company (may be identified from the email address), or thelike.

With the identities of the sender and each of the one or more recipientsof the electronic communication identified, position identifier 306determines a position of the sender and each of the one or morerecipients utilizing corpus 314 in corpora 312 that comprisesinformation, such as organizational charts for the company where thesender is employed; organizational charts gathered from websitesassociated with the domain name(s) of the one or more recipientsrepresenting the administrative realm for the electronic communication;information from social media sites such as Linkedin®, Affluence™,Biznik®, or the like; and/or any other type of hierarchical orinformational structure that represents or provides the sender's andeach of the recipient's position.

Determining the position of the sender and each of the one or morerecipients may just be the depth of each of them in the corpus ofinformation. However, more complex implementations of the illustrativeembodiments may take into consideration whether or not the sender andeach of the one or more recipients are in the same branch, the averagedepth of each branch, or the like. That is, for example, if the senderand a recipient have indistinguishable or vague titles, then theillustrative embodiment may search an organizational chart to determinea relative distance in the organizational tree between the sender andthe recipient.

Using the identified identity information and the position of the senderand the one or more recipients, previous electronic communicationidentifier 308 may perform one of a plurality of previous electroniccommunication identifications. In one illustrative embodiment, previouselectronic communication identifier 308 searches a corpus 314 of thesender's history of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from the one or morerecipients. That is, the illustrative embodiments search for one or moreprevious electronic communications sent to or received from the one ormore recipients from the sender in order to identify a tone of thoseprevious electronic communications.

In another embodiment, if there are no previous electroniccommunications in the sender's history of electronic communications sentto or received from one or more of the one or more recipients, previouselectronic communication identifier 308 requests position identifier 306identify one or more other persons that have the same or similarposition of the one or more of the one or more recipients for whichthere are no previous electronic communications. Using the identifiedidentity information of the one or more other persons with a same orsimilar position of the one or more of the one or more recipients forwhich there are no previous electronic communications, previouselectronic communication identifier 308 searches the corpus of thesender's history of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from the one or more otherpersons with a same or similar position.

In still another embodiment, in addition to searching the sender'shistory of electronic communications for one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from the one or more recipients,previous electronic communication identifier 308 requests positionidentifier 306 identify one or more other persons that have the same orsimilar position to that of the sender. Using the one or more otherpersons that have the same or similar position to that of the sender,previous electronic communication identifier 308 searches another corpus314 of information of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from persons with the sameor similar position to that of the sender.

Regardless of which embodiment is used to identify the one or moreprevious electronic communications, tone analyzer 302 analyzes each ofthe one or more previous electronic communications for one or morepreferred tones using the previously described tone analysis mechanismin order to provide an output for emotional/sentiment tone (anger,cheer, positive, negative, or the like), social/personality tone(agreeable, conscientious, open, or the like), and writing tone(analytical, confident, tentative, or the like) for each of the one ormore previous electronic communications. The illustrative embodimentsmay differentiate between those previous electronic communications thatwere sent by the sender to each of the one or more recipients versusthose electronic communications that were received by the sender fromeach of the one or more recipients. This differentiation may beperformed to determine how the previously sent electronic communicationswere received by the one or more recipients. That is, the illustrativeembodiment may compare the tone of the electronic communications sent bythe sender to the one or more recipients to the tone of responses to thepreviously electronic communications received by the sender from the oneor more recipients in order to determine whether the tone used by thesender was appropriate, i.e. did the response indicate that the tone ofthe sender was or was not appropriate?

With the one or more preferred tones of the previous electroniccommunications determined, comparer 310 compares the tone of theelectronic communication that is being composed to the one or morepreferred tones. If there is a discrepancy between the tone of theelectronic communication being composed and the one or more preferredtones, comparer 310 provides notification 318 to the sender of thediscrepancy. In one embodiment, the notification may be a simplenotification that notifies the sender that the tone of the electroniccommunication may annoy, irritate, or the like, one or more of the oneor more recipients. In another embodiment, the notification may be acomplex notification that not only notifies the sender that the tone ofthe electronic communication may annoy, irritate, or the like, one ormore of the one or more recipients but also identifies which specificrecipient the electronic communication may annoy, irritate, or the like,as well as the specific recipient's position. Additionally, comparer 310may be able to identify, based on the tone analysis and the comparison,the specific portion of the electronic communication that is of concernso that the sender may adjust only that portion of the electroniccommunication and not have to rewrite the entire electroniccommunication.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product. The computer program product may include a computerreadable storage medium (or media) having computer readable programinstructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of thepresent invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like,and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

FIG. 4 depicts a flowchart of the operation performed by the exemplarymechanism to validate the tone of an electronic communication beingcomposed based on the recipients of the electronic communication inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment. As the operation begins,responsive to a sender composing an electronic communication thatcomprises at least one recipient and at least one sentence and/or anattachment that is to be sent to the at least one recipient, anelectronic communication tone evaluation mechanism determines the toneor tones of the electronic communication and/or a tone/theme of anyattachment to the electronic communication being composed by the sender(step 402). The electronic communication tone evaluation mechanismanalyzes the electronic communication that is being composed as well asany text attachment, audio portion of a video that has been converted totext, or text link for language tones using a linguistic analysis thatstudies the correlation between various tones and linguistic features inelectronic communication. For example, the illustrative embodimentsderive emotional scores from the electronic communication using astacked generalization-based ensemble framework. Stacked generalizationis a general method of using a high-level model to combine lower-levelmodels to achieve greater predictive accuracy. Features such as n-grams(unigrams, bigrams and trigrams), punctuation, emoticons, curse words,greeting words (such as hello, hi, and thanks), and sentiment polarityare utilized to classify emotion categories. As another example, theillustrative embodiments derive social scores based on the openness toexperience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, andneuroticism of the electronic communication. As still another example,the illustrative embodiments identify the writing style of theelectronic communication using a linguistic analysis of each sentence.The electronic communication tone evaluation mechanism analyzes anyimage attachment, video attachment, image or video referenced by a link,or the like, to identify one or more of faces, entities, objects,buildings, animals, or the like, in order to identify a theme of thepictures, videos, or the like. The electronic communication toneevaluation mechanism analyzes the theme in the same manner as describedpreviously with regard to the electronic communication itself.

In order to identify whether the tone of the electronic communication isappropriate for the recipients to whom the electronic communication isto be sent, the electronic communication tone evaluation mechanismidentifies the identity of each of the one or more recipients to whomthe electronic communication is to be sent (step 404). The electroniccommunication tone evaluation mechanism performs this operation byanalyzing the “To” field, the “Cc” field, the “Bcc” field, or the like.Further, for the sender, the electronic communication tone evaluationmechanism identifies the sender's identity from the account settingassociated with the application that created the electroniccommunication (step 406). The identity for the sender and each of theone or more recipients, may include a full name (first, middle, and/orlast), an email address, an associated company (may be identified fromthe email address), or the like.

With the identities of the sender and each of the one or more recipientsof the electronic communication identified, the electronic communicationtone evaluation mechanism determines a position of the sender and eachof the one or more recipients (step 408). The electronic communicationtone evaluation mechanism determines the position of the sender and eachof the one or more recipients utilizing a corpus in the corpora thatcomprises information, such as organizational charts for the companywhere the sender is employed; organizational charts gathered fromwebsites associated with the domain name(s) of the one or morerecipients representing the administrative realm for the electroniccommunication; information from social media sites such as Linkedin®,Affluence™, Biznik®, or the like; and/or any other type of hierarchicalor informational structure that represents or provides the sender's andeach of the recipient's position. Determining the position of the senderand each of the one or more recipients may just be the depth of each ofthem in the corpus of information. However, more complex implementationsof the illustrative embodiments may take into consideration whether ornot the sender and each of the one or more recipients are in the samebranch, the average depth of each branch, or the like. That is, forexample, if the sender and a recipient have indistinguishable or vaguetitles, then the illustrative embodiment may search an organizationalchart to determine a relative distance in the organizational treebetween the sender and the recipient.

Using the identified identity information and the position of the senderand the one or more recipients, the electronic communication toneevaluation mechanism performs one or more of a plurality of previouselectronic communication identifications (step 410). In one illustrativeembodiment, the electronic communication tone evaluation mechanismsearches a corpus of the sender's history of electronic communicationsfor one or more previous electronic communications sent to or receivedfrom the one or more recipients. That is, the illustrative embodimentssearch for one or more previous electronic communications sent to orreceived from the one or more recipients from the sender in order toidentify a tone of those previous electronic communications.

In another embodiment, if there are no previous electroniccommunications in the sender's history of electronic communications sentto or received from one or more of the one or more recipients, theelectronic communication tone evaluation mechanism identifies one ormore other persons that have the same or similar position of the one ormore of the one or more recipients for which there are no previouselectronic communications. Using the identified identity information ofthe one or more other persons with a same or similar position of the oneor more of the one or more recipients for which there are no previouselectronic communications, the electronic communication tone evaluationmechanism searches the corpus of the sender's history of electroniccommunications for one or more previous electronic communications sentto or received from the one or more other persons with a same or similarposition.

In still another embodiment, in addition to searching the corpus of thesender's history of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from the one or morerecipients, the electronic communication tone evaluation mechanismidentifies one or more other persons that have the same or similarposition to that of the sender. Using the one or more other persons thathave the same or similar position to that of the sender, the electroniccommunication tone evaluation mechanism searches another corpus ofinformation of electronic communications for one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from persons with the sameor similar position to that of the sender.

Regardless of which embodiment is used to identify the one or moreprevious electronic communications, the electronic communication toneevaluation mechanism analyzes each of the one or more previouselectronic communications for one or more preferred tones (step 412).The electronic communication tone evaluation mechanism performs theanalysis of each of the one or more previous electronic communicationsfor one or more preferred tones using the previously described toneanalysis mechanism in order to provide an output for emotional/sentimenttone (anger, cheer, positive, negative, or the like), social/personalitytone (agreeable, conscientious, open, or the like), and writing tone(analytical, confident, tentative, or the like) for each of the one ormore previous electronic communications. The electronic communicationtone evaluation mechanism may differentiate between those previouselectronic communications that were sent by the sender to each of theone or more recipients versus those electronic communications that werereceived by the sender from each of the one or more recipients. Thisdifferentiation may be performed to determine how the previously sentelectronic communications were received by the one or more recipients.That is, the electronic communication tone evaluation mechanism maycompare the tone of the electronic communications sent by the sender tothe one or more recipients to the tone of responses to the previouslyelectronic communications received by the sender from the one or morerecipients in order to determine whether the tone used by the sender wasappropriate, i.e. did the response indicate that the tone of the senderwas or was not appropriate?

With the one or more preferred tones of the previous electroniccommunications determined, the electronic communication tone evaluationmechanism compares the tone of the electronic communication that isbeing composed and/or attachments to the one or more preferred tones(step 414). The electronic communication tone evaluation mechanism thendetermines whether there is a discrepancy between the tone of theelectronic communication being composed and the one or more preferredtones (step 416). If at step 416 the electronic communication toneevaluation mechanism determines that there is a discrepancy between thetone of the electronic communication being composed and the one or morepreferred tones, then the electronic communication tone evaluationmechanism presents a notification to the sender about the discrepancy(step 418), with the operation terminating thereafter. In oneembodiment, the notification may be a simple notification that notifiesthe sender that the tone of the electronic communication may annoy,irritate, or the like, one or more of the one or more recipients. Inanother embodiment, the notification may be a complex notification thatnot only notifies the sender that the tone of the electroniccommunication may annoy, irritate, or the like, one or more of the oneor more recipients but also identifies which specific recipient theelectronic communication may annoy, irritate, or the like, as well asthe specific recipient's position. Additionally, the electroniccommunication tone evaluation mechanism may be able to identify, basedon the tone analysis and the comparison, the specific portion of theelectronic communication that is of concern so that the sender mayadjust only that portion of the electronic communication and not have torewrite the entire electronic communication. If at step 416 theelectronic communication tone evaluation mechanism determines that therefails to be a discrepancy between the tone of the electroniccommunication being composed and the one or more preferred tones, theoperation terminates.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

Thus, the illustrative embodiments provide mechanisms for identifyingone or more recipients of an electronic communication and determiningwhether the tone of the electronic communication being composed is anappropriate tone for the one or more recipient(s). The appropriate tonefor a recipient may be determined by analyzing the tone of previouselectronic communications to and from the one or more recipients basedon a hierarchical chart, organizational chart, or the like, used toidentify the position of the sender and the position of the one or morerecipients.

As noted above, it should be appreciated that the illustrativeembodiments may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, anentirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardwareand software elements. In one example embodiment, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments are implemented in software or program code,which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software,microcode, etc.

A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing programcode will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectlyto memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can includelocal memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulkstorage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at leastsome program code in order to reduce the number of times code must beretrieved from bulk storage during execution.

Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards,displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system eitherdirectly or through intervening I/O controllers. Network adapters mayalso be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system tobecome coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers orstorage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems,cable modems and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currentlyavailable types of network adapters.

The description of the present invention has been presented for purposesof illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive orlimited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications andvariations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the artwithout departing from the scope and spirit of the describedembodiments. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to bestexplain the principles of the invention, the practical application, andto enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand theinvention for various embodiments with various modifications as aresuited to the particular use contemplated. The terminology used hereinwas chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, thepractical application or technical improvement over technologies foundin the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art tounderstand the embodiments disclosed herein.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, in a data processing system, forvalidating an attachment to an electronic communication being composedbased on the recipients of the electronic communication, the methodcomprising: identifying an associated tone or theme of at least oneattachment to the electronic communication being composed by a sender;identifying an identity of each of one or more recipients to whom theelectronic communication is to be sent and the sender; determining atleast one of a relative position, rank, title, or standing of the senderand each of the one or more recipients; identifying one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from one or more of theone or more recipients; identifying at least one tone of each of the oneor more previous electronic communications in order to generate one ormore preferred tones; comparing the tone or theme of the at least oneattachment to the one or more preferred tones; and responsive toidentifying a discrepancy between the tone or theme of the at least oneattachment and the one or more preferred tones, presenting anotification to the sender about the discrepancy.
 2. The method of claim1, wherein the identification of the tone or theme of the at least oneattachment to the electronic communication is analyzed for at least oneof language tones using a linguistic analysis that studies thecorrelation between various tones and linguistic features in theattachment to the electronic communication; social scores based on theopenness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,and neuroticism of the attachment to the electronic communication; orwriting style of the attachment to electronic communication using alinguistic analysis of each sentence.
 3. The method of claim 1, whereindetermining the at least one relative position, rank, title, or standingof the sender and each of the one or more recipients comprises:identifying the at least one relative position, rank, title, or standingof the sender and each of the one or more recipients from at least oneof an organizational chart for the company where the sender is employed;organizational charts gathered from websites associated with a domainname of an email of the one or more recipients representing theadministrative realm for the electronic communication; information fromsocial media sites; or a hierarchical or informational data structure.4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the at least one relativeposition, rank, title, or standing of the sender and each of the one ormore recipients comprises: determining a relative distance between theat least one relative position, rank, title, or standing of the senderand the at least one relative position, rank, title, or standing of eachof the one or more recipients.
 5. The method of claim 1, whereinidentifying the one or more previous electronic communications sent toor received from one or more of the one or more recipients comprises:searching a corpus of the sender's history of electronic communicationsfor the one or more previous electronic communications sent to orreceived from the one or more of the one or more recipients.
 6. Themethod of claim 1, wherein identifying the one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from one or more of theone or more recipients comprises: responsive to a failure to identifyprevious electronic communications in the sender's history of electroniccommunications sent to or received from one or more of the one or morerecipients, identifying one or more other persons having a same orsimilar position of the one or more of the one or more recipients forwhich there are no previous electronic communications; and using theidentified identity information of the one or more other persons withthe same or similar position of the one or more of the one or morerecipients for which there are no previous electronic communications,searching a corpus of the sender's history of electronic communicationsfor one or more previous electronic communications sent to or receivedfrom the one or more other persons with the same or similar position. 7.The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from one or more of theone or more recipients comprises: identifying one or more other personsthat have the same or similar position to that of the sender; and usingthe one or more other persons that have the same or similar position tothat of the sender, searching a corpus of information of electroniccommunications for one or more previous electronic communications sentto or received from persons with the same or similar position to that ofthe sender.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying at least onetone of each of the one or more previous electronic communications inorder to generate the one or more preferred tones comprises:differentiating between those previous electronic communications thatwere sent by the sender to each of the one or more recipients versusthose previous electronic communications that were received by thesender from each of the one or more recipients; and comparing the toneof the previous electronic communications sent by the sender to the oneor more recipients to the tone of responses to the previous electroniccommunications received by the sender from the one or more recipients inorder to generate the one or more preferred tones.
 9. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the notification notifies the sender that the tone ortheme of the attachment to the electronic communication may annoy orirritate one or more of the one or more recipients.
 10. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the notification notifies the sender that the tone ortheme of the attachment to the electronic communication may annoy orirritate one or more of the one or more recipients; identifies one ormore specific recipients the electronic communication may annoy orirritate; and identifies a position of each of the one or more specificrecipients.
 11. A computer program product comprising a computerreadable storage medium having a computer readable program storedtherein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on acomputing device, causes the computing device to: identify an associatedtone or theme of at least one attachment to an electronic communicationbeing composed by a sender; identify an identity of each of one or morerecipients to whom the electronic communication is to be sent and thesender; determine at least one of a relative position, rank, title, orstanding of the sender and each of the one or more recipients; identifyone or more previous electronic communications sent to or received fromone or more of the one or more recipients; identify at least one tone ofeach of the one or more previous electronic communications in order togenerate one or more preferred tones; compare the tone or theme of theof the at least one attachment to the one or more preferred tones; andresponsive to identifying a discrepancy between the tone or theme of theof the at least one attachment and the one or more preferred tones,present a notification to the sender about the discrepancy.
 12. Thecomputer program product of claim 11, wherein the identification of thetone or theme of the at least one attachment to the electroniccommunication being composed is analyzed for at least one of languagetones using a linguistic analysis that studies the correlation betweenvarious tones and linguistic features in electronic communication;social scores based on the openness to experience, conscientiousness,extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism of the electroniccommunication; or writing style of the electronic communication using alinguistic analysis of each sentence.
 13. The computer program productof claim 11, wherein the computer readable program to determine the atleast one relative position, rank, title, or standing of the sender andeach of the one or more recipients further causes the computing deviceto: identify the at least one relative position, rank, title, orstanding of the sender and each of the one or more recipients from atleast one of an organizational chart for the company where the sender isemployed; organizational charts gathered from websites associated with adomain name of an email of the one or more recipients representing theadministrative realm for the electronic communication; information fromsocial media sites; or a hierarchical or informational data structure.14. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the computerreadable program to determine the at least one relative position, rank,title, or standing of the sender and each of the one or more recipientsfurther causes the computing device to: determine a relative distancebetween the at least one relative position, rank, title, or standing ofthe sender and the at least one relative position, rank, title, orstanding of each of the one or more recipients.
 15. The computer programproduct of claim 11, wherein the computer readable program to identifythe one or more previous electronic communications sent to or receivedfrom one or more of the one or more recipients further causes thecomputing device to: search a corpus of the sender's history ofelectronic communications for the one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from the one or more of the one ormore recipients.
 16. The computer program product of claim 11, whereinthe computer readable program to identify the one or more previouselectronic communications sent to or received from one or more of theone or more recipients further causes the computing device to:responsive to a failure to identify previous electronic communicationsin the sender's history of electronic communications sent to or receivedfrom one or more of the one or more recipients, identify one or moreother persons having a same or similar position of the one or more ofthe one or more recipients for which there are no previous electroniccommunications; and using the identified identity information of the oneor more other persons with the same or similar position of the one ormore of the one or more recipients for which there are no previouselectronic communications, search a corpus of the sender's history ofelectronic communications for one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from the one or more other personswith the same or similar position.
 17. The computer program product ofclaim 11, wherein the computer readable program to identify the one ormore previous electronic communications sent to or received from one ormore of the one or more recipients further causes the computing deviceto: identifying one or more other persons that have the same or similarposition to that of the sender; and using the one or more other personsthat have the same or similar position to that of the sender, searchinga corpus of information of electronic communications for one or moreprevious electronic communications sent to or received from persons withthe same or similar position to that of the sender.
 18. The computerprogram product of claim 11, wherein the computer readable program toidentify at least one tone of each of the one or more previouselectronic communications in order to generate the one or more preferredtones further cases the computing device to: differentiate between thoseprevious electronic communications that were sent by the sender to eachof the one or more recipients versus those previous electroniccommunications that were received by the sender from each of the one ormore recipients; and compare the tone of the previous electroniccommunications sent by the sender to the one or more recipients to thetone of responses to the previous electronic communications received bythe sender from the one or more recipients in order to generate the oneor more preferred tones.
 19. The computer program product of claim 11,wherein the notification notifies the sender of at least one of: thatthe tone or theme of the attachment to the electronic communication mayannoy or irritate one or more of the one or more recipients; identifiesone or more specific recipients the electronic communication may annoyor irritate; or identifies a position of each of the one or morespecific recipients.
 20. An apparatus comprising: a processor; and amemory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprisesinstructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processorto: identify an associated tone or theme of at least one attachment toan electronic communication being composed by a sender; identify anidentity of each of one or more recipients to whom the electroniccommunication is to be sent and the sender; determine at least one of arelative position, rank, title, or standing of the sender and each ofthe one or more recipients; identify one or more previous electroniccommunications sent to or received from one or more of the one or morerecipients; identify at least one tone of each of the one or moreprevious electronic communications in order to generate one or morepreferred tones; compare the tone or theme of the of the at least oneattachment to the one or more preferred tones; and responsive toidentifying a discrepancy between the tone or theme of the of the atleast one attachment and the one or more preferred tones, present anotification to the sender about the discrepancy.